The Transgender Thread

[Hula]

You know I wasn't trying to be offensive, right? But you're right. I've got plenty of gay friends but have never known, personally, a transgender. I wasn't fully aware until my girlfriend pointed out that I should have been typing she instead of he in my first post.

I didn't think you were, don't worry! It did twig something with me when I first read it but almost immediately I remembered not everybody automatically knows the correct protocol about pronouns. Related to that (and to Dra508's comment), it's only really when I notice misgendering in news articles and whatnot that it bothers me because I always feel like journalists should know better. I know journalists are only human and we all make mistakes... I mean, back when I was still going to a trans group I slipped up and referred to a pre-op transwoman in an Asian movie as 'he' and even though I corrected myself right away, I felt sick—and this was after I'd spent a lot of time reading about trans folk. It's just that there's this naive part of me that always hopes the media will be objective, or at least if they choose to cover stories like this, that they'll be sensitive. A rough 6 times out of 10 I'm disappointed, so those 4 times I'm always extra pleased when people go out of their way to use the correct terminology.

I find far too often that journalists adopt this sensationalist tone about transgender people (transwomen, especially) where they're treated like a carnival attraction or something. There was an article a little while back about a little girl who was trans and they kept referring to her as a 'he' whenever they were highlighting the fact that she wasn't born female. It skeeved me out because other than that, the article was presented in a very open-minded way and it seemed like such a glaring mistake/insult when taken in context. There's a difference between a slip of the tongue when it comes to pronouns (or just not understanding how pronouns work in general) and making a point of highlighting the he/she change.

In short: apologies, Richard, if it seemed like I was targeting you there—I honestly didn't intend it that way!

And on a related note (but not sparked by this conversation in any way), I made the decision today that I'm going to go by male pronouns again. I'm sick of feeling like I'm not entitled to ask people to use the correct gender with me because I'm not making any immediate plans to medically transition. For a while I thought it was easier to go the gender neutral route because it was embarrassing to correct people when I was quite clearly physically a female in most people's eyes. Right now getting rid of that niggling feeling every time someone calls me 'her' is more important to me than avoiding uncomfortable moments. That's not to say that I'm ready to come out to everybody yet (my manager used the phrase 'fucking dyke' to refer to somebody the other day so I'd rather not hear what she has to say about trans people) but I'm going to start taking small steps again.

So yes: male pronouns, just a heads-up to everyone.

[carpenoctem]

UNCOMFORTABLE HONESTY TIME: Reading about Tom's choice to become Laura made me feel uncomfortable, and I still don't know quite what to think about it. I don't really know any openly trans people - though I have a friend who recently came out as a lesbian, and when I asked her if she felt more like she was a guy she seemed to be drifting towards yes - so there's no human face for me to attach my compassion (or lack thereof) to. I think that's the biggest problem in LGBT issues of any kind, not understanding that behind the Big Issue is a real person with real feelings, and instead there's just the impulse to demonize them by holding up eccentric fringe groups as examples. For example my mom used to know a guy at work who would tell her about how he would go out into the woods with a bunch of guys, like rent a cabin or something, and they would all wear diapers and pacifiers, take lots of drugs and have orgies. So for a long time my mom actually thought all gay people were adult babies who were unable to avoid succumbing to their ravenous urges to have group sex in the woods the moment they left their 9-to-5 jobs.

Anyway I am open to learning more about transgender issues, and I think it's cool that, particularly in the punk subculture, Laura has the courage to put this out there.

[Hula]

You'd be a prime example for why putting the word out there is good, not bad. I read some numb-skulled comment yesterday where a guy was basically saying trans people shouldn't publicise the fact that they're trans, but how is everybody going to learn if they aren't exposed to it, if they don't see that trans people (along with other LGBT folk) are exactly like everyone else? Unique—but in the same way that every single human being is unique.

A lot of the time activism isn't about working to educate those who are too far gone (essentially the people who are doing the oppressing), it's about broadening the horizons of people who are open to learn but just don't know any better or have honest-to-god never been exposed to people who don't fit their view of the norm.

[Dra508]

A lot of the time activism isn't about working to educate those who are too far gone (essentially the people who are doing the oppressing), it's about broadening the horizons of people who are open to learn but just don't know any better or have honest-to-god never been exposed to people who don't fit their view of the norm.

Hula. He is so smart.

[theruiner]

Hula, you got it, dude.

Anyway I am open to learning more about transgender issues, and I think it's cool that, particularly in the punk subculture, Laura has the courage to put this out there.

THAT is the most important thing. It's ok to be unfamiliar with something, as long as you're open-minded and trying to understand. I can't fault anyone for that.

[Goldfoot]

Hula, you got it, dude.

THAT is the most important thing. It's ok to be unfamiliar with something, as long as you're open-minded and trying to understand. I can't fault anyone for that.

I must not be normal when it comes to mentality to issues of this nature. I don't have any personal experience with someone who fits into this category, but I've never thought there was anything wrong with it. Unless it has a negative effect on other people, I'm completely fine with how anyone wants to live their life. I don't have any ridiculous notion that one fringe group is indicative of everyone that is remotely like them, either. There's this guy I used to work with who is, at least from what I've heard (and this was after I worked with him), gay and a furry. This didn't change my opinion of him. I always thought he was strange, but for other reasons. And not that those things make him strange, or are even a bad thing, just that it wasn't surprising to learn those things about him.

Ugh, here I am trying to make sure you don't think I have any negative feelings about this when my point was just that the people who I do know that lead "alternate" lifestyles, I don't even see them on any kind of regular basis. My point is that even though I don't have any friends, or frequent acquaintances, of this kind, I'm still completely fine with however people want to live their lives. It's very rare that I hear an argument AGAINST that holds any kind of weight to me. Most often it is a religious argument, and since I think all religions are bullshit, they do exactly nothing to convince me that any "alternate" lifestyle is wrong in any way. It's even annoying to me when people express their opinions on these matters when those opinions ARE against people living their life in a way this particular person disagrees with. What does it fucking matter? Like I said, as long as you aren't negatively impacting someone else's life, do whatever you want. Who am I, or anyone else, to tell you that you are wrong?

[Elke]

I read this really interesting story about someone who changes genders almost every day. This person is, amongst many things, bipolar and has borderline syndrome, and one of its manifestations is that sometimes he'll use a very male genderexepression, and some days she'll be extremely feminine, and she wants to be addressed as such. Reading the article was extremely difficult, because where in English you could say 'one is' or 'they are' if you don't want to use gender, there's no such option in Dutch. The only thing to say is 'het', which is kind of like 'it' and not ever used for people.
I read that article, I think, about four times before I finally got it all.
On the other hand, I call everyone 'love' and 'dude' quite indiscriminately, and sometimes people blow up over that.

I guess my personal 'gender really doesn't matter' approach is extremely personal and doesn't work for other people. Sadly.

[icklekitty]

I always wondered whether the fact that most feminist/poststructural literature was written by francophone people was due to the fact that that language is SO gendered. Everything is either masculine or feminine. Even knives and forks.

[Goldfoot]

I guess my personal 'gender really doesn't matter' approach is extremely personal and doesn't work for other people. Sadly.

I've got the same approach. Most of my friends and I use "gender specific" words indiscriminately. My friend's fiancée and her friend call each other dude all the time. It's common for use to use "bitch" toward each other, no matter what the sex, in an affectionate fashion. Of course, after reading into this the little I have on the internet, this sort of behavior doesn't seem to be normal. :-\

[Dra508]

I've got the same approach. Most of my friends and I use "gender specific" words indiscriminately. My friend's fiancée and her friend call each other dude all the time. I

Actually, I've found people say dude to me (I'm a women) more in the course of conversation as an exclamation with loss of gender specificity: "dude, you should have seen Thom Yorke dancing. It was awesome."

[carpenoctem]

A lot of the time activism isn't about working to educate those who are too far gone (essentially the people who are doing the oppressing), it's about broadening the horizons of people who are open to learn but just don't know any better or have honest-to-god never been exposed to people who don't fit their view of the norm.

This. Although I like to think no one is too far gone. Unfortunately it may take some kind of tragic event to get them to think differently - it seems like I hear a lot of stories about gay/lesbian/trans suicides, and only in the aftermath do their families start reconsidering their stances. Not that everyone has to be forced to change their stance, they just better be loving and treat that gay/trans person as a human being, considering those who are opposed to it are often opposed for religious reasons! Anyway. It just irritates me because Jesus would've been hanging out with these people and giving them hugs like that group of Christians did at the pride parade in Chicago, not sitting behind a desk on the 700 Club, airing self-righteous venom to the world from the safety of a television studio.

[richardp]

Actually, I've found people say dude to me (I'm a women) more in the course of conversation as an exclamation with loss of gender specificity: "dude, you should have seen Thom Yorke dancing. It was awesome."

Yeah I call EVERYONE dude. Dude to me is not like a gender thing, but more so like... the equivalent of calling someone a friend or something.

[theruiner]

I've called my best friend "dude" for years (she's a lady). But then I had another friend, back in high school, chew me out for it, so ever since then I've been very careful not to repeat that mistake.

[playwithfire]

I once tried to figure out a gender neutral pronoun in French class. Not everyone understood why I was asking and me trying to very vaguely explain didn't help. I didn't want to be like BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE ARE GENDERQUEER GOSH

[sick among the pure]

I'm starting to wonder if my tall/long mohawk has a bit of a feminine look to it, and if I should then but it to a shorter, thinner one. Also, getting rid of sideburns since real side burns are starting to grow in, and these are kinda hiding that.
Thoughts?

(pic for reference for those who have not seen)

[Hula]

It's hard to know without seeing the shape of your face—certain hairstyles make my jaw look really square and manly, but if I part it a little differently I look all round-faced and girlish so I guess it comes down to the whole rather than any one portion of it. The 'hawk itself doesn't look feminine, at least not to me.

[theruiner]

It doesn't seem feminine to me.

[Elke]

I'm going to third that.

[sick among the pure]

I'll post a pic of it down once it's clean enough that I'm not all "I LOOK NASTY!" because it's summer vacation and I've been playing video games since my last critique. Think Richard Patrick, in the meantime (if I'm remembering my NIN band members correctly that is).
I think my problem is I feel like since it's long when it's down, it looks more like a chick with an undercut than a guy with a mohawk that's down. It's not practical, or healthy for my hair, to have it up half the time. Think Richard Patrick, in the meantime.

[Sutekh]

Gender is a social construct, and identity is which you choose. Or both.

both... the constructivists have a strong case but biology would seem to carry certain implications - ie breasts & uterus - but I will stress, I do not believe the individual is necessarily bound to or innately inclined to pursue any particular role

The ideals that trans people strive for do interest me... are they entirely constructed? Or does biology imbue identity with some hardwired reflexes

Social ideas of gender (in my opinion) stem from extremely broad observations of biology, the mildly rational basis of which, I believe, confuses people & leads to the persistence of debate on these issues. People naturally love simple totalising summaries of complex issues (ESPECIALLY bi-polar, two-dimensional accounts, see political left/right male/female etc) but the reality is a mind boggling plurality

blah blah, sorry for jargon I've had a couple

[Hula]

blah blah, sorry for jargon I've had a couple

You managed to sound intellectual after having 'a couple' at least :P

What you wrote is quite interesting, though. Even as a transman and somebody in favour of abolishing the idea of gender as a strictly binary factor, I feel like there are some inherent ties between biology and gender. I guess it's just hard to ignore the possibility when you consider that gender had to come out of somewhere. Some of them are more obvious than others: women are traditionally seen as 'mothering' and 'gentle', likely because of their biological role as mothers. I imagine men are traditionally seen as strong and aggressive because in antiquity it would've been necessary for them to do all the hunting and gathering while their mates were heavily pregnant and incapacitated. I don't necessarily feel that all women are inherently mothering, though, because you've got my mother who just doesn't know how to handle herself around children even though she's had two and you've got me who never wanted children, not to mention the whole transmasculine thing.

I do wonder sometimes if there's a default 'mode' for males and females (speaking on the most basic biological level here; I'm aware of intersex people and those who identify outside the binary) since hormones surely have to play a part in things, and when you look at how different a man's body turns out to be compared to a woman's when as children they were both virtually identical (superior upper body strength even when they aren't particularly physically active, typically greater height, etc etc) it'd be silly to ignore that there are at least some gendered/biological differences.

It's times like this I wish I'd taken gender studies or something in college. We touched upon it briefly in English Lit during the women's writing module, but that was more about social constructs within gender than biology versus upbringing. I suppose how I feel, without being fully knowledgeable on the subject, is that there probably are some inherent differences between the sexes that propagated the idea of gender. I think the gender binary has become a little bit more irrelevant every day as the years have gone by and women have shifted the historically sexist idea that all they're good for is cooking and raising children and speaking when they're spoken to, but I do see some merit to the idea that women (for the most part) are inherently womanly (whatever the fuck that even means these days) and men are inherently manly. Obviously you have exceptions, and you have people who identify outside of male or female, and you have people like me who are 5'6", have the strength of a kitten and want desperately to be a 6-foot-tall man with incredible deltoids and a massive package. Then again, my dysphoria has always been more physical than social, so the only time I've been bothered by the idea of such a rigid gender binary is when I'm reminded that there are people who still to this day think all women are feeble (both of body and mind) and should and will always be inferior to men.

I'm probably not the best person to speak about it when my idea of my own gender has been so strongly tied to the body I wasn't born with :|

I ramble entirely too much this thread. I feel like I should try to make what I say more concise but then I start to lose my intended meaning.

WHATEVER, I DO WHAT I WANT.

[theruiner]

Obviously you have exceptions, and you have people who identify outside of male or female, and you have people like me who are 5'6", have the strength of a kitten and want desperately to be a 6-foot-tall man with incredible deltoids and a massive package.

Once again, if only we could switch bodies, all your dreams would come true.

[icklekitty]

both... the constructivists have a strong case but biology would seem to carry certain implications - ie breasts & uterus - but I will stress, I do not believe the individual is necessarily bound to or innately inclined to pursue any particular role

The ideals that trans people strive for do interest me... are they entirely constructed? Or does biology imbue identity with some hardwired reflexes

Social ideas of gender (in my opinion) stem from extremely broad observations of biology, the mildly rational basis of which, I believe, confuses people & leads to the persistence of debate on these issues. People naturally love simple totalising summaries of complex issues (ESPECIALLY bi-polar, two-dimensional accounts, see political left/right male/female etc) but the reality is a mind boggling plurality

blah blah, sorry for jargon I've had a couple

Technically breasts and uterus define sex, which transpeople still have to put down as what is physically there. I agree with allegro re: the definition between gender and identity, but I also think that bit you've put in bold there is completely true.

In an ideal world, we'd have sex (because no matter how you identify, this is necessary for some medical things, I think) and sexuality, but no gender. Gender is the most retarded thing in the world and has no purpose other than to foster micro-mechanics of power; and we're ALL trapped by it.

[Hula]

Once again, if only we could switch bodies, all your dreams would come true.

We are the literal definition of 'I only want you for your body' :P

Massive package, you say... Where's a wacky scientist when you need one?

[Dra508]

My big ass corporate employer is encouraging us to celebrate International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia by giving us a banner to put in our email signature. I think I'll save all my emails and send them all on Thursday, May 17th.

[theruiner]

That's awesome! You work for a kick-ass company. I've never worked for a place that so much as acknowledged that, let alone did something like that.

[orestes]

We are the literal definition of 'I only want you for your body' :P

Massive package, you say... Where's a wacky scientist when you need one?

Here you go, Hula.

[theruiner]

So, um...you know that whole, like, seeing pictures of the opposite sex and/or seeing people of the opposite sex while out and about and then that horrible depression just washes over you? Yeah. It happens all the time, but a few times last week it was worse than usual. Ugh. I fucking hate this so much.

I'm in limbo until I get medical benefits, then I can see a therapist and really delve into this. Until then, it's just trying to cope like I always have. Stupid dysphoria.

I'm a broken record. But thanks for letting me vent.

[playwithfire]

Does seeing "transgender" used as a noun make anyone else cringe? I was reading an article on Beth Ditto just now and read this.


"Although Beth had developed strong feelings for Kristen she waited until her nine-year relationship with transgender Freddie Fagula ended in January 2010 before embarking on a romance with Kristen."

Surely that's not PC. I know it's better to say "transgender" than "trangendered" but I thought that was as an adjective. Like "transgender artist" or whatevs.

[Hula]

I know this is going to sound really stupid, but I shaved my pits today 'cause there's the slightest chance I might be seen without my clothes this weekend and just... I feel like I've let myself down. It's always been such a silly little show of masculinity but it's the little things that help me through the day. The fact that I was so quick to do it out of fear that the person in question would think I was a freak or turn me away or whatever makes me worry that I'll never be fully comfortable being myself with people I'm sexually/emotionally intimate with. On top of that I'm scared I'll put my transition (and my happiness) on the back burner in the long run if it means I can have some semblance of a 'conventional' lifestyle.

I FEEL LIKE SUCH A FRAUD. Ugh.

Anyway.

Surely that's not PC. I know it's better to say "transgender" than "trangendered" but I thought that was as an adjective. Like "transgender artist" or whatevs.

Yeah, transgender as a noun makes me cringe SO MUCH. I've seen people identify as 'a transgender' or 'a bigender' themselves, though, so I guess it's just a matter of people not really knowing any better—even when they are transgender themselves.